Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Why do Some Republican Senators Act Like They are Entitled to Make all Decisions for the President?

“It seems to me that trying to speak with one voice — one American voice — seems to have become a quaint thing of the past. I regret that enormously.” Former SecDef Gates

The fault of that lays right on the doorstep of Republicans in Congress especially in the Senate led by Graham, McCain, and Inhofe who cannot seem to comprehend they don't run the Government. Truly shocking and the Republicans in Congress seem to have forgot the history of how foreign policy used to be handled in this Country. Shame on them!

What was so amazing to me about this article from David Ignatius was the fact I was talking to someone about this very topic over the weekend after all these broke and the usual suspects went running out to microphones. Here was Scoop Jackson one of the leading hawks in 1980 recommending prudence. We needed a lot of that out of LBJ on Vietnam and instead received a micro manager of our military forces on the ground costing many lives. Poor example of a wartime President. Many bought into the GOP hype that Jimmy Carter was a weak President and that is why the Iranian hostage situation happened. Today the Republicans are using the same mantra on President Obama that he is a weak President which couldn't be farther from the truth. It is like replaying the late 70's and 80's today in the GOP.

Shame Presidents Reagan, Clinton, and the granddaddy of them all Bush 43 didn't pay attention to what Senator Jackson was saying. Might have have saved this country a lot of lives, military resources, and our budget if we didn't spend so much on military weapons which far exceeds what the next country spends. What we are doing is not only upgrading but now those upgrades are keeping big defense companies rolling in dollars when they can pay their CEO 26M+ a year with bonuses. DoD has turned into a money maker for their companies who depend on war. How many cruise missiles did Clinton send basically into tents or factories? They had to be replaced at a fairly high cost. Made Boeing happy. Where would we be if those Presidents mentioned above had listened to Jackson?

The year was 1980. The Iranian revolution had toppled the shah’s regime, the Soviet Union had just invaded Afghanistan and the United States’ president, Jimmy Carter, was widely perceived as a weak leader. Looking for a sharp-edged evaluation of the situation, I decided to interview Sen. Henry M. Jackson, a leading hawk.

What Jackson (D-Wash.) said was surprising, even at a distance of nearly 35 years. Rather than demanding tougher statements or more saber-rattling, he said he worried about “overreaction” to events: “We appear to be going from one crisis to another,” with Washington dispensing “red-hot rhetoric at least once a week about the dire consequences of this or that or something else.”

“We need to be prudent,” said Jackson, who was perhaps the most prominent Cold Warrior of his day. “There is a need for the U.S. to make careful decisions, stand by those decisions, and avoid sending false or conflicting signals” to U.S. allies or the Russians. David Ignatius (Wash Post)

I purposely left out Bush 41 because the first Iraq War was to free Kuwait who Saddam Hussein had invaded with his forces. The United Nations was clear that Hussein had to leave Kuwait or he would be thrown back into Iraq. Bush 41 and General Schwartzkopf and along with their staffs did a excellent job of planning and executing those plans of the coalition to remove Saddam from Kuwait. They planned for the future after he was removed from Kuwait. In the aftermath, sanctions plus a no-fly zone were instituted against Iraq. That also meant it was near impossible for Saddam to have the amount of WMD's/chemical weapons touted by the Bush/Cheney Administration when there were also mandatory inspections.

Looking back invading Iraq to remove Saddam had no relation to the Taliban or Al Qaeda in Afghanistan as Saddam did not allow Iraq to become a haven for them to operate out of Iraq. Why did the US invade with trumped up evidence? M-O-N-E-Y for companies like Halliburton where Cheney came from before becoming the Vice President candidate when he couldn't find anyone else. How convenient. SecDef Rumsfeld was part and parcel to the invasion of Iraq and using phony evidence in a presentation to the United Nations.

This time the combination of Cheney/Rumsfeld didn't plan for the peace when Saddam was ousted which cost many more lives then the actual invasion of Iraq. I do vehemently disagree though with some pundits who compare our going into Iraq with Putin going into Ukraine. First of all there was a no-fly zone in Iraq along with sanctions that Saddam thumbed his nose at time and time again plus he was a brutal dictator so IMO even with trumped evidence it was no big loss to remove him and his sons from power. What was a travesty was no plan in place for Iraq following his removal. I also believe any action against Saddam should have been delayed until we had firmer footing in Afghanistan and more help from the locals. We had no business fighting two wars at the same time.

In 2001, President made the famous comment that to this day I cringe:

We are talking about Putin who was KGB and frankly I along with others think that Bush 43 was suckered into believing Putin. Putin may not have an honest bone in his body, he lies openly and when confronted Putin loses it as we saw earlier this week when asked a question. From New Republic:

Slouching in a fance chair in front of a dozen reporters, Putin squirmed and rambled, and rambled and rambled. He was a rainbow of emotion: Serious! angy! bemused! flustered! confused!

Today Putin is on a charm offensive and we are expected to trust this man? What else was Bush 43 led down the primrose path by Cheney and company?

Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel is reported to have become “really annoyed” about Russian President Vladimir Putin and has questioned whether he “was still in touch with reality.”

The German mass circulation Bild newspaper wrote on Monday that during a telephone conversation she held with US President Barack Obama to discuss the growing crisis inUkraineshe complained that Mr Putin was “living in another world.”

“She appears to have become really annoyed,” Bild remarked. The paper said it had gained inside information on the telephone exchange between the US and German leaders from American sources.

The two leaders roundly criticised Mr Putin in their conversation and agreed that Russia’s military intervention in Crimea was in violation of international law. A German government spokesman said that both stressed that it was important for the international community to respond to the crisis in unison.

Both were said to be in favour of sending an immediate fact finding mission to Ukraine and backed the idea of setting up of a contact group, possibly overseen by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, with the aim of ending the crisis through political dialogue.

McCain and Inhofe I have to come to expect BUT and it is a big one I do not understand how Senator Lindsey Graham who is an Air Force Reserve Officer can attack his Commander in Chief as being a weak President and try to undermine him at every turn. The US Taxpayers pay his salary in the reserves.

IMHO he should be subject to the UCMJ, Section 88, Contempt toward Officers, for his derogatory remarks over and over again against President Obama. If he wants to speak out against the President who is his boss, then resign his commission today. He is an affront to the men and women who serve honorably. For a JAG officer to act like this is even more sickening. He deserves no respect from anyone. It is not about the man who is President but the fact he is the Commander in Chief of our Armed Forces which Graham does not seem to comprehend. If that wasn't enough to make you think Graham has lost it, this should do it:

My son sent that to me -- what I said when I saw this I don't use on here. How stupid can one man get because Graham is approaching the lowest levels of some pretty dumb Republican comments. He cannot let Benghazi go no matter what which brings into question his teaching any classes in law while in the Reserves to fellow JAG officers. He doesn't sound like a lawyer but someone who cannot stand anyone but a white guy as President and along with his buddies, McCain, Inhofe, now Rudy, and some others will never give President Obama any credit. I cannot even fathom how they would treat a woman the way the GOP treats women today.

When I read in the Washington Post about what former Secretary of Defense and CIA Director Gates had to say, I couldn't agree more. Maybe it is time that those GOP jokers decided to put aside their internal feelings to support the Country -- what a novel idea. Excerpted comments from Ignatius interview with Secretary Gates:

I asked Gates what he thought about the criticism of Obama by McCain and Graham. “They’re egging him on” to take actions that may not be effective, Gates warned. He said he “discounted” their deeper argument that Obama had invited the Ukraine crisis by not taking a firmer stand on Syria or other foreign policy issues. Even if Obama had bombed Syria or kept troops in Iraq or otherwise shown a tougher face, “he still would have the same options in Ukraine. Putin would have the same high cards.”

Gates, a Republican himself, urged the GOP senators to “tone down” their criticism and “try to be supportive of the president rather than natter at the president.”

Gates can be an emotional person when he talks about national-security issues, as any reader of his recent memoir, “Duty,” can see. And he showed some of that emotion when he said, near the end of our conversation: “It seems to me that trying to speak with one voice — one American voice — seems to have become a quaint thing of the past. I regret that enormously.”

That sums up what I many of us are thinking that today's Republican Party has lost all sense of decorum and traditions of the past to become grandstanders who do not accept the outcome of elections. What we have witnessed out of Republicans in Congress since January 2009 is driving many of us to leave the Republican Party. I won't remain in the same party with a bunch of arrogant jerks like Graham, McCain, Inhofe, Rubio, Rudy, and the list goes on and on in the Senate and House as well as Governors and members of state legislatures.

Want to do the Country a huge favor? Oust the GOP in 2014 from leadership and get some common sense back in the Congress where work will actually get done!